Thanks to Ted for finding this, fascinating article with music attached.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014 ... d=fb-share
It is currently Sun Apr 22, 2018 9:35 am
Several people have sent me links to this article about two legendary early blues women, and asked for my opinion. I first heard about it a few days ago when Ted Gioia, who is mentioned at one point, was talking about it on his page. And people are going to be talking about this article for a very long time, because it contains a lot of stuff that is really revelatory. I do have some minor issues with it but they are unimportant in the face of what the author has to tell us. Among those amazing things I am only going to underline one here, and that is that we now have a significant blues performer on record as saying that there was blues in Texas as early as 1903 or so, when she began to learn to play. This of course badly undermines the popular myth that it was born in the Mississippi Delta, though there never has been very much evidence to support such an idea, anyway.
That brings me to my little list of complaints. First. it’s impossible to read this without having mixed feelings about the way the author and his accomplice, Caitlin Rose Love, dealt with Mack McCormick, but Sullivan himself is quite forthright about that can of worms, and even after stating our misgivings, we have to say that had they not acted as they did, they would not have been able to do all the important follow-up work that they did to fill out the picture. And even if McCormick's work were made known at a later date, we would have lost much of the detail they added.
I also have problems with the style. Sullivan writes well but I find his prose overwrought. I prefer writers who put the facts before us to those who go all poetic allatime, that’s just me, I guess. Plainly Sullivan doesn’t see it that way, and the fact that he would go out of his way to praise Peter Guranick’s very fluffy and disappointing “Searching for Robert Johnson” is telling. Likewise he cites the less-than-useless Greil Marcus on a few occasions, something guaranteed to bring down the tone of any article. And he duly genuflects before the alter of John Lomax, and even those of us who have come to expect such a gesture in articles like this may be surprised at the way it is perfumed here. The idea that there were only a tiny handful of people who knew about the importance of blues records in the 1930’s is weird to start with (for one thing, it seems to be saying that the black people buying the records didn’t know the music was important), and crediting Lomax in this regard while ignoring people like John Hammond and John Work is puzzling. And applying phrases like "the most prominent of those great ethnomusicologists" to Lomax will always make some of us cringe. For far too long has the history of blues been the history of blues writers, and only a certain ones, at that. At least Paul Oliver gets some props, though.
Anyway, all of that is for the people who asked for my opinion, but my opinion isn’t very important, and these negatives are even less important. Having something of the true story of these two women is so far beyond what anyone could have hoped for, no lover of blues or American musical history can possibly be less than delighted with it. How perfect the details turn out to be!
Rob Hall wrote:Personally, I have a low opinion of the works of Greil Marcus. Do you count yourself as a fan Andy?
AndyM wrote:Rob Hall wrote:Personally, I have a low opinion of the works of Greil Marcus. Do you count yourself as a fan Andy?
I think he's unbearably pretentious at times, very insightful at others, but most of all always stimulating to read.
Adam Blake wrote: "less than useless" is just plain silly and spiteful. Clever boys at their worst.
Funny that after the forum existing all these years this is the first time Marcus has ever been discussed here (to my knowledge).
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests